Within all of our hearts is a deep longing – an inconsolable cry for a passion we sense is missing.  In the roar of our waterfalls, we hear a Voice, Deep Calling Deep.  It is the Voice of our First Love arousing in us a profound yearning for ecstasy, artistry, and adventure with Him.

This collection of poems describes the very raw and honest spectrum of my faith-journey.  Initially, I was reluctant to share the dark side of my many years wrestling with God.  I thought it would be dishonoring to God, and I didn’t want to do that.  However, after much prayer and contemplation, I concluded that the Bible is very inclusive of honest struggles and heartfelt lamentations of suffering souls.  Because I believe God invites and honors such authentic grappling of our faith, I have written this collection of poems to share with others mosaics of my misery as well as kaleidoscopes of my conquests through Christ.

Ironically, it was during my darkest years that I found the Book of Job to offer me the most comfort.  Job’s account revealed an unapologetic underbelly of the kind of honest struggle I could relate to.  Other stories I had come across that were all wrapped up in their neatly tied bows didn’t fit my pain paradigm.  At best, they were irrelevant and irritating.  At worst, they were incendiary and mocking.  Plus, I felt like such saccharine storytellers had little to no “street cred” to speak into my life about real pain and heartache.  I would hear my heart screaming, “SERIOUSLY?  You call that pain?”  Hence, the reason I was inspired to write Deep Calling Deep, and not Shallow Calling Shallow.

Darkness gives dimension.  Troubles give texture to a tapestry.  Deep Calling Deep is a very textured tapestry - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  But I would rather have an “ugly win” than a “pretty loss,” and I believe that is the very essence of this book.

I have found that if the pain is not transformed, it will be transferred.  Writing this book has helped transform me. My mess became my message.  Although many loose and knotted threads still remain dangling from the underbelly of my tapestry, I have attempted to weave my words into a handicraft of healing, both for myself and hopefully others.

“He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us” - 2 Corinthians 1:4

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